Yes as you can see it is that time again, and we are back for another
four months. Many thanks to Dave and Simon for keeping you all informed
about their antics while we were off enjoying our leave. They are now all
off for a well earned break themselves.

The crew handover in Montevideo from Captain Elliott's team to Captain
Burgan's team went smoothly. We arrived there courtesy of Varig and via
Sao Paolo in Brazil on Sunday afternoon. Having left from Heathrow on Saturday
night where it was so cold the wings of the plane had to be de-iced, you can
imagine how nice it was to get off in Montevideo where it was 29°C......!
Just to get us in the mood for coming back to work Varig had specially
brewed us some beer!

The beer - click to enlarge!!

Seeing in the New Year Uruguayan style was an interesting experience,
by just after midnight the streets looked a bit like the footage we have
all seen of Buenos Aries, just across the river, the difference being that
this was people celebrating! It seemed everybody in the city felt obliged
to set off at least a handful of fireworks, mostly up the street!

We sailed from Monte’ at 1500 on New Year's day and once out of the
River Plate turned right a bit and headed for South Georgia and the start
of the science cruise JR70.

The passage down takes about 5 days and this time has been put to good
use by both the ship's staff and the scientists. We have to complete all
sorts of drills and so because we will be working shifts from next week
this was a perfect opportunity to fit some in without causing too much
disruption.

They started in Monte’ with the perfect antidote for a New Year hangover
in the form of a lifeboat drill for everybody. This included actually launching
one boat with everybody in it, as the outside temperature was nearly 30°C there were some green looking people about! We have also had practical instruction on fire extinguishers and hoses as well as a normal fire exercise. The picture above shows some of the fire training. Click on the image to enlarge.

As well as getting involved with our drills the science staff have also
been busy setting up the labs and equipment. Part of this meant trials
for the UOR, CTD, XBT, RMT and bongo net.....Confused? Over the next few
weeks the people behind each of these wonderful pieces of equipment will
explain more!!

So JR70..... just what are we going to be doing?

Well, probably the best person to answer this would be Pete Ward,
the Principal Scientist............

Here we are at the start of another biosciences cruise around South
Georgia. This year, in addition to spending the next 35-40 days surveying
for krill in the vicinity of Bird Island, we will be attempting to measure
how quickly currents are carrying krill and other zooplankton into and
out of the region. By doing this and measuring krill growth rates and the
amount removed by predators we have a cruise that rejoices in the name
of the Flux and Marine Production Experiment or FLUMPEX for short.

At the moment we have just left Bird Island at the North Western end
of South Georgia having been fully engaged in mobilising the cruise since
leaving Montevideo on New Year's day. Science has been ongoing from the
start with the bird observers practising their techniques from the newly
constructed ‘hide’ purpose-built on the Monkey Island and other data also
starting to come on stream. We have a number of drifting buoys fitted
with transmitters and GPS systems to deploy which will uplink to passing
satellites and enable us be able to fix the buoys positions on a daily
basis. In this way we can start to build up a picture of water transport
around the island. We will be working closely with the scientists stationed on Bird Island who will be collecting ‘scat’ samples from predators to measure the amounts and sizes of krill consumed and monitoring the movements
of satellite tagged seals, penguins and albatrosses.

Krill growth experiments will be carried out in our ‘constant temperature
room’ which presently resembles a construction site as tanks, tubing, filters
and other experimental apparatus are readied for use.

More on our scientific progress next week when we should be well into
the swing of things.

And what are we doing now?

Well we have been target fishing since last night when we finished an
XBT transect. The target fishing involves steaming along until we spot
some krill and then trying to catch them using the RMT net.......again
this will all be explained further over the next few weeks.

We arrived at Bird Island at 0800 this morning to swap over some people
for the cruise as well as taking the opportunity to deliver some fresh
produce and looking at the current base hairstyle.......some more bleach!

Looking up the jetty towards the base, this is where you need scratch and
sniff pc's!

Wimp of the week........!

This has to go to Luke who was crewing one of the boats with me going
into BI. He would not brave the sweet little furry's to go ashore, as we
all know they will not hurt a fly!. This picture shows Luke Trussler (AB) on the jetty at BI......and no, he didn't go any further!

Coming up.......

We are starting the Western Core box which includes releasing some drifter
buoys and generally really getting into the science with everybody now
on shifts.